第15章

When he had taken possession of his poor room,he made a packet of Mme.de Bargeton's letters,laid them on the table,and sat down to write to her;but before he wrote he fell to thinking over that fatal week.He did not tell himself that he had been the first to be faithless;that for a sudden fancy he had been ready to leave his Louise without knowing what would become of her in Paris.He saw none of his own shortcomings,but he saw his present position,and blamed Mme.de Bargeton for it.She was to have lighted his way;instead she had ruined him.He grew indignant,he grew proud,he worked himself into a paroxysm of rage,and set himself to compose the following epistle:--"What would you think,madame,of a woman who should take a fancy to some poor and timid child full of the noble superstitions which the grown man calls 'illusions;'and using all the charms of woman's coquetry,all her most delicate ingenuity,should feign a mother's love to lead that child astray?Her fondest promises,the card-castles which raised his wonder,cost her nothing;she leads him on,tightens her hold upon him,sometimes coaxing,sometimes scolding him for his want of confidence,till the child leaves his home and follows her blindly to the shores of a vast sea.Smiling,she lures him into a frail skiff,and sends him forth alone and helpless to face the storm.Standing safe on the rock,she laughs and wishes him luck.You are that woman;I am that child.

"The child has a keepsake in his hands,something which might betray the wrongs done by your beneficence,your kindness in deserting him.You might have to blush if you saw him struggling for life,and chanced to recollect that once you clasped him to your breast.When you read these words the keepsake will be in your own safe keeping;you are free to forget everything.

"Once you pointed out fair hopes to me in the skies,I awake to find reality in the squalid poverty of Paris.While you pass,and others bow before you,on your brilliant path in the great world,I,I whom you deserted on the threshold,shall be shivering in the wretched garret to which you consigned me.Yet some pang may perhaps trouble your mind amid festivals and pleasures;you may think sometimes of the child whom you thrust into the depths.If so,madame,think of him without remorse.Out of the depths of his misery the child offers you the one thing left to him--his forgiveness in a last look.Yes,madame,thanks to you,I have nothing left.Nothing!was not the world created from nothing?

Genius should follow the Divine example;I begin with God-like forgiveness,but as yet I know not whether I possess the God-like power.You need only tremble lest I should go astray;for you would be answerable for my sins.Alas!I pity you,for you will have no part in the future towards which I go,with work as my guide."After penning this rhetorical effusion,full of the sombre dignity which an artist of one-and-twenty is rather apt to overdo,Lucien's thoughts went back to them at home.He saw the pretty rooms which David had furnished for him,at the cost of part of his little store,and a vision rose before him of quiet,simple pleasures in the past.

Shadowy figures came about him;he saw his mother and Eve and David,and heard their sobs over his leave-taking,and at that he began to cry himself,for he felt very lonely in Paris,and friendless and forlorn.

Two or three days later he wrote to his sister:--"My dear Eve,--When a sister shares the life of a brother who devotes himself to art,it is her sad privilege to take more sorrow than joy into her life;and I am beginning to fear that Ishall be a great trouble to you.Have I not abused your goodness already?have not all of you sacrificed yourselves to me?It is the memory of the past,so full of family happiness,that helps me to bear up in my present loneliness.Now that I have tasted the first beginnings of poverty and the treachery of the world of Paris,how my thoughts have flown to you,swift as an eagle back to its eyrie,so that I might be with true affection again.Did you see sparks in the candle?Did a coal pop out of the fire?Did you hear singing in your ears?And did mother say,'Lucien is thinking of us,'and David answer,'He is fighting his way in the world?'

"My Eve,I am writing this letter for your eyes only.I cannot tell any one else all that has happened to me,good and bad,blushing for both,as I write,for good here is as rare as evil ought to be.You shall have a great piece of news in a very few words.Mme.de Bargeton was ashamed of me,disowned me,would not see me,and gave me up nine days after we came to Paris.She saw me in the street and looked another way;when,simply to follow her into the society to which she meant to introduce me,I had spent seventeen hundred and sixty francs out of the two thousand Ibrought from Angouleme,the money so hardly scraped together.'How did you spend it?'you will ask.Paris is a strange bottomless gulf,my poor sister;you can dine here for less than a franc,yet the simplest dinner at a fashionable restaurant costs fifty francs;there are waistcoats and trousers to be had for four francs and two francs each;but a fashionable tailor never charges less than a hundred francs.You pay for everything;you pay a halfpenny to cross the kennel in the street when it rains;you cannot go the least little way in a cab for less than thirty-two sous.